Names in Print

One of the things I do to keep the grey matter occupied is to do occasional voluntary work with a service user/carer group at the University of Central Lancashire in Preston (UCLan).  I've been doing it now for a few years and recently I volunteered to do some work with one of the senior lectures in Social Work at the uni.  To tell the truth, she asked everyone and I was the only person who held their hand up.

The lecturer is writing a book for student social workers and she wanted some input from a service user or carer, and that was me.

What an invigorating experience it was.  I have done a bit of writing in the past, but only for my own pleasure, though a couple of things have been published. Anyway, this had to be right.  Not enough to express a glib impression or half thought out idea.  This needed to be thoughtfully written and absolutely spot on in terms of grammar etc.  So, today the final version of the chapter I have been working on is being put together, and it was such a pleasant surprise to see my name in print at the top of the chapter, along with the lecturer.  

Feels good.  Might consider doing a bit more if I am asked.

Now I need to get back to finishing off writing the book I've been working on for some months.  I've finished the actual 'story', now I need to re-read and edit it, and that so far, is proving almost as hard as the original writing was.

I've got 165,000 words on paper so far, and can't see there being many more.  Back to the grindstone!!

New Year, new things to do

Well, I suppose technically it was a new year several days ago, but this is the first time for ages that I have put anything like pen to paper, so it is almost a new year.

Things progress sometimes, don't they?  Like the stuff I have been doing this past few months.  I have finally decided to write the story of my grand mother which I have been threatening to do for some years now.  As I get older and older it seems like a good idea to get it done, before I forget how to use a computer, I suppose.

Went to Australia last year and had a marvellous time in both Melbourne and Sydney.  What truly fantastic cities they both are.  People are wonderful too.  I landed in Melbourne and stayed there for a week then caught a train for an eleven hour journey through the most wonderful countryside to arrive about seven in the evening in Sydney, then had to find my hotel.  It was pouring with rain when the train arrived and of course there was a mega queue for taxis, but I managed it in the end.

The hotel was in what Google maps said was the red light district of the city, Kings Cross.  it wasn't that bad, in fact it was pretty good.  My hotel was just across the border in Potts Point.  If you need to go to Sydney, or just want to, then Potts Point is a brilliant place.

Spent a week in Sydney visiting libraries and the state archives where I found that not only are the staff fantastic, but the information I researched there threw some very interesting lights all over my grandmothers history.  Gave me a lot of new information to include in the book.

Caught the train back to Melbourne for one night then hired a car to drive 100 miles out into the bush to a wonderful place called Alexandra where I spent a week.  What a wonderful country area it is.  Drove around the bush and up into the mountains where I scared myself witless driving along forest tracks - not to be recommended if you are in the sort of car I was in, a Toyota Camray automatic.  Rubbish car and not suited to forest tracks at all.  But it was an interesting journey.  Brilliant waterfall at a place called Snobs Point. Worth going there just for the name.

After several days there I drove back to Melbourne and flew home.  52 hours of a journey.  thanks Emirates for not really telling me I could have claimed a free hotel in Dubai for the fourteen hour stopover!  But i got home in one piece.

Enjoyed it so much I might go back later this year.

Just about recovered from a truly wonderful weekend spent with my wife rather large family in a most beautiful place.  Cotherstone is a very old village in Teesdale in County Durham.  It has a couple of pubs which are still going strong thanks to the locals who frequent it, but also the many visitors who come to the area each year.  This is one of the pubs, The Fox and Hounds.  Well worth a visit for a swift or leisurely pint of Black Sheep Ale or to stop over for a meal.

The tip there is one of the few enjoyable drives left in this overcrowded country.  Come off the M6 at junction 38 and head across country towards the A1 and Scotch Corner, but come off to go through Kirby Stephen.  The road is fast, if you want to go fast, and then heads up from the valley floor onto the tops of the valley before picking up the A66 before sliding off to the left near to Barnard Castle.

A few miles over the wild moorland road brings you into the village, and a welcome brew at my sister in laws home, and her children.  Three daughters and four grand children.  what a wonderful crowd.  Old fashioned I may be, but it does my heart good to see such a war, supportive and mad family!  Truly mad.

Not far away is the market town of Barnard Castle with a market square still used for a farmers market each week.  Wonderful shops on either side of the main street selling the stuff shops used always to sell.  Spent a few bob on a new shirt and a couple of second hand books which had taken my eye, not in the same shop I hasten to add.

Already looking forward to the next visit to the place, and to see a young lady who thinks my wife and I are wonderful.

The End -- originally written in 2011, and then deleted by force at request of an alien.

What do you do when love goes?  When the person you have lived with and loved for six years or more decides that she cannot cope with the illnesses you have attracted and that combined with the pressure of other things going on in her life means that the relationship you had has got to end?


I don't know the answer, but that is what I am currently living through.  My partner I feel is suffering from depression due to the massive stresses she has been under from her work and other outside influences, but if I try to tell her my thoughts she will not accept it.


She sends out many conflicting messages, almost on a daily basis.  She has constructed a picture of her life, of my life and of our life which really does not stand up to scrutiny.  That picture she then reinforces with events that do not actually happen or are slanted in such a way that they fit the picture.


This is a sad and depressing time for me, because you see, I love her still.  I think I always will.  She has told me twice in the past months that she loves me, she has also repeated some words she wrote on a card for a birthday once.  


"I don't want to spend a day in my life without you in it".  Maybe they were not her original words, but they had a profound effect on me, even five years later on.


Thursday 3rd March 2011
Tonight I asked Yvonne if she would like to go to the cinema tomorrow night and suggested a film we would both like to see.  She made an excuse and said she thought that there was something she had agreed to do tomorrow, and to let her think about it.


I went into her bedroom and found that she had packed an overnight bag, without any nightwear in it.  Last week she told me that a business colleague who has become a friend had asked her to stay over for the night.  She told me that she had declined but if she felt threatened by me then she would.  I think she has made arrangements with him to stay with him on Friday.  She has three times this week sat in the car outside the house for up to forty minutes on her mobile phone.  This is getting to be unbearable.
Her paranoia is now so bad that she is locking her bedroom door each night and during the day.  Maybe she has cause to, but her behaviour is such that everything she does is telling me she does not want me around here.


The e mail she sent to me by accident after my operation was an eye opener.  "I cannot understand why David is still hanging around" she wrote.  Well, the truth is I still love her.


A friend said to me that a partnership is over when one of the people decides it is over.  True.  Nothing the other person can say or do will change that if the persons mind is made up.  Hers seems to be.  She is burning herself up with the number of hours she is spending with the man child, they see each other seven days a week.  She has been out with him for days in the country and north wales, and then she comes home and ignores me.


This is a truly horrible existence.

Homeless

Sunday 20th March 2011




Never thought this would happen, but here I am homeless.
It happened last week when Yvonne phoned me whilst I was in a meeting at Preston. (10th March)  Told me she had had enough and that my clothes were packed and in one of her empty houses across from where I had been living.


By 8pm that night I was settling into a room in a hostel for the homeless and feeling more like death than ever before in my life.


It hasn't been much better since then other than the massive amount of support and sympathy I have had from friends, family and colleagues.  How she could make me homeless eight weeks before I am due to start cancer treatment is beyond belief.  Such a level of cruelty and selfishness is hard to comprehend.  And now she is trying again to control what I do and who I tell about my situation.


She is trying hard to paint a picture to all and sundry that my drinking has lead to mental instability (well she should know as she is a practising psychologist), and that life was intolerable with me.  


The truth is a bit more prosaic.  She became bored with our normal life and is intent on seeking the thrills of a younger newer relationship.  She has always been this way and will end up a lonely old woman with no friends.  She has few at the moment due to her behaviour over the years.  Even her longest standing friend has refused to comment on a long complaint she sent to her about me.


Neglects to tell the whole story that she decided of her own accord that our relationship was over, just happened to coincide with the onset of a semi romantic liaison with a new man in her life.  He is 16 years younger than her and together they have made my life a misery for the past year with their sniggering, staying at his house until 2am, going off for days out together.  Sharing dirty jokes, blue movies generally behaving like 14 year olds.  In truth that is his mentality.  She cannot seem to understand that her behaviour has in large part contributed to my feelings of anger and despair.


She has only wanted me around this past few months for the sake of her new business she is starting.  Well now she has blown it.
The crunch came when I sent her details of some of the rather sick web sites she and the man-child had been trawling through during the time they were working together on a legal paper they were concocting.  She blew!  I am homeless.


What part of "I love you" includes "but your clothes are now across the road and you are homeless eight weeks before you are due to start your cancer treatment?"


Difficult to know really.

Long time no see 18th September 2014

It is almost three years since I last wrote anything for this blog.  wonder why? Maybe the last time I wrote was about a rather nasty episode which happened to me.  Now that is all over.
Cancer has been treated and seems to be gone for ever (fingers crossed), left only with polymyalgia, which is a pain in the bum, and other places as well, and COPD, but apart from that life is good.

Just returned from two weeks in the sun in Madeira and had a wonderful time, and looking forward to the next time, I hope.

The passage of time reminded me with a rather nasty shock this morning when I had a phone call from a very good friend of mine who plays around at comensus at the university of Central Lancashire.  A good friend of ours has recently been moved to a hospice with the final stages of cancer.  He has fought it for several years now, but finally it has caught up with him.

His name is John and behind his back (sometimes) we call him the Philosopher.  He is a wonderful man who will be sadly missed when eventually his time is up.

Been a bit of a year for deaths, first my dear father in law James who died at the end of January, then my sister Stella in the middle of August and now John.

They do say you can tell how old you are when you start going to more funerals than weddings and baptisms.  ah well John, You wouldn't like us to moan and cry over you, though believe me old friend, you will be missed.

Nicked

About a month ago I was arrested by our friendly local Police.  

It went something like this.

7.50pm my mobile phone rings, I answer it.  There is a very stroppy loud female police officer on the other end.  She tells me that a complaint has been made that I have been harassing my former partner over a period of ten days in May, and that if I didn't present myself at a police station some 35 miles away the following day, then she would come and arrest me.

"But you don't know where I live", I say.

"We are the Police, I can find out quickly enough.  You need to be here." she snaps back. "And if I have to come and get you it could be in the middle of the night or any time.|"  Nice.

"I can't come tomorrow, I have an appointment for a scan for postate cancer at 5pm when you want me."  That shut her up!.

So we agreed that I would come the day after at 10am where I would be seen by another officer, and I duly presented my quaking body at the local nick at the appointed time and date, where another copper arrested me on suspicion of having harrassed my former partner by e mail and phone calls.  Before going there I took the precaution of consulting a solicitor who said he would come to the station after he had been to court that morning.  I had also printed off the e mails between my ex and myself and made a long list of the nine texts and phone between me, four of her friends and herself.  Not an incredibly long list.  He read the e mails and then after about two minutes or so raised his bearded head from the table and said, "This is a load of bollocks".

"Is that a technical phrase you lawyers use in court?" I asked.

"Sometimes," he replied, "Particularly when the evidence is a load of bollocks".  I felt I was getting onto firm ground here.

After being arrested by the duplicate police officer I was taken to the Custody Suite (posh name for a Charge Office) where the Constable explained to the female Charge Sergeant the reason for my arrest.  The Sergeant, a tall blond of about forty years of age and gorgeous, listened to hiim, thought for a minute and then said, "Can I have a quick word with you in the back office please?" and the two of them disappeared for a few minutes.

When they reappeared the gorgeous blond said, "I think there is a better way to deal with this, I am not accepting the charge and would like you to come back here, of your own accord by appointment to see the officer who is actually dealing with the incident."

"Yes please," I replied.  "Will you be here?"

"No" she said, "GO".  I went.

So, yesterday I went back to the nick with my good friend the solicitor, this time feeling more confident than the first time.

I was shown into the Custody Suite again but gorgeous blond was not there, it was a man this time.  He listened to what the officer said and then turned to me.  "I am accepting this charge and I understand there is a search warrant being applied for as we speak to search your home for evidence of these offences."

I was gobsmacked, to say the least, in fact, my gob had never been so smacked.  My solicitor trod on my toes heavily to stop my mouth from saying what he knew was forming in my mind.  I kept silent, almost.

The bottom line was that my home was search and my netbook, three memory sticks and a neck tie were taken by two large officers.

I was released on bail to reappear at the nick in September, when my netbook would be returned unless they came to a decision about the case earlier, in which case I would be notified.

I came home fairly despondent.  No that's not right.  I was very severely pissed off. (Sorry for the language, but I was not a happy bunny).

An hour after I arrived home my mobile sounded off.  I answered it, it was the noble bearded one.

"Just spoken to the police officer who arrested you.  He has spoken to his boss, who has spoken to his boss beause none of them think there is a case to answer.  The officer has spoken to your ex who says she does not want to prosecute me, just wants me to stop all this nonsense.  So, I'll see you in the morning for the offical bits of paper to be written off.  OK?"

I went there again this morning and got the whole thing cleared off in ten minutes.  What a relief.  And they gave me back my netbook the memory sticks and the tie.  I asked why they had taken the neck tie, "It was offensive" said the officer.

No taste some people, just no taste.

The whole problem arose because I was trying ot get my personal belongings back from her house, the one she had stopped me going into.  This has been going on for three months now!  I ask you!  

So now, I have to be a good boy and not harass her for the next six months.  Believe me, nothing has ever been further from my mind.  At the time of the split I was despondent, but after a couple of weeks realised I was better off without her, but not once could anyone have said I was harassing her.  I was simply trying to get my stuff back from her.

Anyway, thank goodness, it is all over and I can get on with the rest of my life in peace.

Anyone for tennis?